BUSINESS

  SCRIPTOPEDIA

4 STEPS TO SUCCESS

FOLLOW THESE TIPS TO DEVELOP AN UNFORGETTABLE “FRONT-OF-MIND” BUSINESS

FIFTY years ago, this publication put a spotlight on practice management. I define practice management as, “a set of optimized services and solutions (products) that enable leaders, managers and advisors to achieve their most important business objectives and grow.” To celebrate OM’s 50th anniversary, rather than providing one or more specific scripts to improve your practice’s finances, I follow in the great steps of this important publication by providing a “how to” piece on developing a successful business. Remember, all the clinical skills in the world won’t mean a thing unless you have a place to deliver them.

1 ASSESS YOUR PRACTICE

Use the following methods to assess your practice.

• From the top down. This is a qualitative approach and starts with asking your team, “What matters to you?” When you gain a clear picture of what matters most, you’re giving yourself — and everyone involved in the assessment — a guiding standard throughout the assessment process. No doubt, your team will have a number of matters. Combine them for a 35,000-foot view of what you want your practice to look like, and assess where you’re hitting, missing, staying on track and/or deviating from the track.

For example, if a team member says having patients come in on time and ready to see the doctor according to schedule is what matters to him or her, assess whether and at what percentage this is happening.

• From the bottom up. This quantitative approach begins with taking a hard look at the key characteristics and key performance indicators of your practice and benchmarking them against industry standards. (Practice management software is essential here.) Doing so provides opportunities to create goals.

• Surveying your patient base. Doing formal patient surveys helps you understand where to set goals so your team can better meet patient needs. Consider tools, such as Survey Monkey or Google Forms.

2 SET GOALS

Once you’ve made your assessment and have started to define goals from that information, develop and employ your goals using the S.M.A.R.T. formula. This is an abbreviation for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant and Time-bound. Using these criteria makes it easier to develop a solid plan for pursuing and achieving goals.

As you look at your overall list of goals, categorize them by importance, and choose the most important first.

3 TRANSLATE THE GOAL INTO ACTION

Once you’ve chosen your most important goal, translate it into action by determining strategies.

For instance, if your most important goal is to increase revenue by $200,000 prior to December 2016, you would determine that the strategies for accomplishing this are adding a sub-specialty, adding premium products and focusing on undiagnosed dry eye disease (DED) patients, among other strategies. Of these, focus on one or two at a time that would add the most value currently and in the long term. (The completed practice assessment would be a valuable resource in making this decision.)

Next, decide on the tactics and tasks associated with the strategy or strategies that will move you toward achieving that goal. Tactics are the methods you’ll use to support your strategy. Tasks are the actionable elements of your tactics — specific steps you can work on or assign to lead to completed goals. To accomplish the strategy of focusing on undiagnosed DED patients, for instance, you may define several tactics, such as identifying patients who would benefit from DED therapy. This tactic then requires several concrete tasks, such as having all patients answer a DED questionnaire.

When delegating tasks to your team, keep in mind that will, skill and time in one area does not necessarily translate to another. For instance, an employee who is competent working “in” the business — the necessary day-to-day functions like pre-testing — might not be capable of working “on” the business, say, planning a DED marketing campaign. You may also find that your existing team may not be able to complete certain tasks. In these cases, avoid mutual disappointment and employ outside or temporary sources for help. A terrific source to find freelance talent is guru.com.

Regardless of who is responsible for specific tasks, all should verbally accept the responsibility and report daily/weekly on progress. To streamline the process, use a year/month “At-A-Glance” calendar to post who, when and what.

4 EVALUATE AND BENCHMARK

Now, evaluate how your efforts are measuring up. Tying strategies to a measurable result helps to clarify incoming data. In fact, for each strategy you come up with to accomplish your goal, have an associated key performance indicator (KPI).

For example, in referring to undiagnosed DED patients, the number of DED patients you acquire is the true sign of whether you’re hitting the mark.

In a situation in which your tactics and tasks didn’t move your KPI, scrutinize them to ensure they were carried out exactly the way you wanted. For example, in the case of DED patients, maybe your team didn’t provide DED questionnaires to all patients.

TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS

In challenging times, which in my mind is always, extraordinary practice management has numerous and compounding benefits, from growing revenue and decreasing risk to providing more value to your patients. So, if you haven’t already, complement your clinical skills with strong practice management. OM

MARK HINTON is CEO and president of eYeFacilitate. Email him at mark@eyefacilitate.com, or to comment on this article, visit tinyurl.com/OMcomment.